REFLECTION — Release 0.24.0101

The new TaxiStartup release brings you a bunch of cool features for Driver and Passenger applications. Can’t wait to test all the new features and updates? Well, we understand you … but first things first!

Driver App

We’re striving to become more effective and versatile all the time. From now on, all our apps will use less traffic than ever before. It gives you lighter, easier and faster to download and use apps. We’re doing everything (im)possible to save your device memory and nerves – we know how annoying it is when the app is downloading for ages!

Passenger App

What is splash screens?
A splash screen appears just after you’ve started an app, and you see it while the app is launching. Our goal is to improve user experience and make using an app pleasant and user-friendly.

We’ve improved splash screens for Android – now you can add any pictures or logos, not only create colored screens.

If you have the latest iPhones XS Max and XR, don’t worry, you can now enjoy splash screen feature on your brand new device too.

Newly added Facebook SDK metrics and events

Integrated with TaxiStartup apps a while ago, Facebook Analytics (software development kit, SDK) allows tracking events that keep your business up and running

After release 20.0, you can track more important events. Based on the riders actions in the taxi app, there are following events and metrics based on them that you can monitor right now:

App install — user installs the app.

App launch — user opens the app.

Sign up for the app — user gets registered in the app.

Booking confirmed — user books the services.

Order cancelled — user cancels an order.

Trip paid — user proceeds a payment for an order.

Card added — user ties up a credit card to their account.

From now on, trip paid is classified as a default purchase event that adds up to the Revenue and Lifetime value reports.

And even more with this update, you will easily answer a question that is of a great interest for every businessman – “For every dollar I spend on ads, how much will I get back?”. So basically it allows you to see how much every ride costs and measure your Facebook return on every dollar spent on ad.
Now you can also use new set of metrics: Monetization Metrics showing Lifetime Value for Paying users and Revenue reports. It also includes the metrics of Repeat Purchases which might be of a great use for analyzing customer behaviour.

Revenue TabLifetime Value Tab

Now you can see the Lifetime Value report either for all users or only for paying ones. LTV report can give you better understanding of the value of your customers.

Lifetime Value is an essential metrics for evaluating the net profit you might get from this particular user. It helps you to analyze such factors as how much a customers spends on every purchase, the potential length of your relationship, etc.

Do you wanna be the first to try out the new updated features and metrics? Hurry up, they are waiting for you:)

Taiwan-based company launches electric-only fleet of Tesla cars

Air pollution has become the main concern in populous areas of Asia, so Zero-emission venture company (ZEV) came up with a great idea — offer uber-like service using the Tesla electric cars in Taiwan.

Now you can take a ride and save the planet at the same time for a fair price.

Innovative idea

ZEV was always thinking about creating a service that can be not only convenient for riders but also comes along with an environmental governmental plan. The idea was elegant — they launched brand new service — environmentally friendly ride-sharing service using only Tesla cars. This initiative became a part of the public plan to ban the sale of gas-powered motorcycles by 2035 and cars by 2040.

On the way to success, ZEV faced its own obstacles. The first one was that there were not enough Tesla cars for commercial use. It took a while to increase the number of cars from 5 to 20. Also, there was a problem with hiring. Because the service was mostly for business travelers — all the drivers should be qualified not only to drive people from point A to B, but to answer questions and assist if required. And ZEV succeed — one time driver even saved client’s marriage!

Technology partnership

To be innovative means to choose a reliable technological partner. We all know, that the user-friendly application means a lot when it comes to taxi services. For example, Uber, and how they changed the game with their app. The system should be stable, support team should be in touch almost 24/7, UX/UI design should meet the needs of riders used to tech — so ZEV turned to TaxiStartup to develop a white label customer application that will satisfy both riders and drivers.

TaxiStartup launched applications are available for both iOS and Android devices.

ZEV is born

Tesla electric cars only. The aim was to provide the most sustainable transportation method by adopting new technological cars and minimizing lifecycle emission from energy sources to vehicles.

Zero emission. Imagine — no engine exhaust during a quiet and luxury journey. With the Model X, Tesla put a lot of effort into developing a more powerful air filtering system in order to not only contribute to the reduction of local air pollution with electric vehicles but also to reduce the direct impact of air pollution on the occupants of its vehicles.

Zero air street pollution…and even more! Every car has a pollution sensor and every journey helps ZEV to collect air quality data and identify air pollution sources. The collected data can be shared with private and public sectors to inform environmental protection measures.

Clean energy generating. The main goal of ZEV is generating an equal amount of clean energy of their fleet by 2021. All profits are committed to more green power sources.

Clean energy generating. After every trip passenger will be rewarded with “points” which can be used to obtain a discount for the next journey.

Sounds impressive, huh?

Conclusion

ZEV pioneered saving the planet and providing high-quality service at the same time.
They have a significant point of difference to competitors because of the app ease of use, the comfort of Tesla cars and environmental focus.

Hard work and patience make a dream come true and we are happy to become part of such an important initiative.

And remember — all your bold business ideas can come true with TaxiStartup solutions.

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How to make a working website

Valentin Sauts designs user interfaces for over 12 years. He’s an experienced art director and a design guru TaxiStartup is extremely happy to have in-house. Years of experience haven’t made his heart tough though, and he’s still eager to share some no-bullshit insights on how to design a good website.

Learn and enjoy.

Tip 1. There’s too much information. Stand out

To begin with, there’s too much of everything nowadays. Posts on social media, news, fake news, pictures, videos, products, thoughts… We can get anything we want. Nothing sticks, nothing lasts, nobody seems to remember what was hype a year ago. The result is simple: to be memorable, you have to catch the eye.

Because of this need to be eye-catching, contemporary design is often aggressive, very bold, wild. The main purpose of being bold is being different, grasping attention. Because, well, if your audience won’t be able to tell the difference between you and all the other companies, your business is virtually dead.

At Stanford University, they’ve recently found out that about 50% of all people shape their opinion about the services based on how the website looks. When users don’t like the design, they are much more inclined to perceive all the information as unreliable.

This is why thorough client research is crucial for designing a good website. To know what kind of design you should create, you need to know what’s appealing to your target audience. A simple example: if you target young people, don’t hesitate to splash bright colors generously all over the website. Even without particularly liking the realization, people remember bright things.

Tip 2. A cool logo is a half battle

In terms of design, the company logo is the most important thing, ever. The logo is something you use on the website repeatedly, and many app owners initially create a logo with their eyes fixed on this aim. Somehow, they fail to foresee that a logo is used for branding on all sorts of things: vehicles, leaflets, T-shirts… This is why there are so many unreadable, messy logos out there.

The fact is, a logo is something people should recognize you by. Most humans have bad eyes and very little attention to perceive all the great details you put in your logo. What’s even worse, people cannot remember something they did not recognize.

Conclusion? Design a logo for your company (and your website, respectively) to be as simple as possible. Cut out all the coat-of-arms-like nonsense, don’t even start playing with an idea of giving it some additional or hidden meaning.

Here are some general recommendations to make a well-perceptible logo.

Do not use thin fonts. They are simply not readable from a distance.

Try not to use capital letters. In case it’s inevitable, make sure to increase the letter spacing so that the letters won’t stick together too much.

Try to make a monochromatic logo. The lesser the number of colors is used in the logo, the better it is to remember.

Do not implement any tiny details into the logo. Because it’s not only the website where you will use the logo, small details can really be a pain in the neck.

Avoid using icons in the logo. The icon itself distracts a person from perceiving the company’s name. Okay, if your company is Apple or Jaguar, there’s always space for the icon. But if you are a new business, do not even attempt it. There are so many icons on Earth already, the chance that you will be remembered for the icon is zero — while the company’s name is quite easy to memorize.

Tip 3. Right website layout is a king. Seriously

The layout is basically the way your webpage looks, the way you place the information on it, how the things are arranged. There are several rules for creating a perfect layout for your app’s website.

First of all, never be afraid to be bold and noticeable. In fact, it’s better to set a trend than to follow one. Experiment with your layout, fight for attention — and you will win.
Another rule is understanding why people actually visit the website. After you’ve won the user’s attention, you have to retain it. The only way to keep users engaged is to give them exactly the information they’re looking for. Are they looking for a link to download the app? Put it in a prominent place!

The next point is that everything should be as easy as possible. People don’t like spending time reading huge promotional texts and watching long ads. Be straightforward and up-to-the-point. Make the website layout and the navigation clear. Is there a need to say the information should be structured? Just don’t talk about everything at the same time. In the world flooded with information, people are thankful for that.

“Less is more” is actually the best rule for creating a good website design. Less text, fewer pages, shorter pages length should be the priorities.

Probably the last advice — and the most important at the same time! — is that mobile website design should go first when you’re planning a layout. This approach is called “mobile first”. If you start with a desktop version, you have a feeling there’s a space to fit all the information in. On mobile, you don’t have this space. Scaling from mobile to desktop is therefore easy and painless while working another way around is labor-intensive and often more expensive. So why invest more if you can invest less?

Tip 4. Good fonts are essential for good website design

The drama of my life as a designer is that people don’t realize how important the fonts are. How a font can influence our perception. Every font has its own temper, and you need the one matching your brand appearance. Know “Harry Potter”? A good font is like a magic wand: it chooses you and makes you stronger.

So choose a good font. The right font is literally a half of the work one needs to do for a good website for a mobile app. It’s simply about creating a joyful experience for the people reading your texts.

Do not use more than two fonts on the website. Ideally, stick to just one. Select two or three text styles for headings, one for buttons, one for the basic text — this is right enough to make the webpage look good. Want to highlight something? Be careful: don’t highlight too many things at a time. Leave the text some space to breathe.

Whatever font you use, avoid long lines. The optimal length is between 5 and 7 words, like in newspapers and magazines. The optimal font size is 16 pt.

Tip 5. Make sure the website content speaks for your company. Out loud!

The top-priority of making a website for an app is monetizing the app, right? Getting more downloads, attracting new clients, re-engaging the existing customer base. In other words, the design should work hard for your business.

This is why choosing the right content is essential for good design. First of all, figure out what kind of images can show the spirit of your product, photos or illustrations. If you go for photos, skip out on stock images, even if “real pictures” have poorer quality. Real shots are always more attractive to people — because humans basically love seeing other humans

Call-to-action buttons are a vital element of website design. They should be placed on the main page, in the middle of the site, at the end. Yet take care to not overdo it. It works the same way as in the real life: while networking, you tell people how cool you are and then give them a possibility to contact you — but you don’t force them to write down your cell number, huh?
Wanna know one universal rule on picking good website content? When in doubt if it’s interesting, don’t share it. Works perfectly for every element.

Good luck with being the brightest out there!

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Taxi and beyond: 11 rocking on-demand business ideas

One simple everyday thing becoming a huge challenge due to traffic, mobility issues, and the whole rollercoaster of big-city life. Do you recognize it? Probably everyone who’ve ever faced such things was confronted with a question “How come there’s still no Uber for this?”

Willing to have “an Uber” for everything, from transportation to laundry services, is the driving power of the on-demand economy. On-demand is still increasingly popular — because people are really eager to get rid of routine concerns making their lives a quest.

Then again, there’s this notion of making the world perfectly and equally accessible for everyone. On-demand tech seems to be the ultimate way to achieve this goal.

But how to come up with a great on-demand business idea? How to make a cool idea a great business? How to survive in the competitive market?

What are the coolest on-demand business ideas?

On-demand is a technology helping to get rid of a middleman. Not because managers are useless — just because their services cost time and money. On-demand technologies are time- and money-saving. And here the cool stuff begins: almost anything, from an ambulance to any peer-to-peer service, can function as an on-demand app. Yet this is also where troubles begin…

Have a look at the chart below. You can see the most successful on-demand companies work with really common services, the ones not requiring too much proficiency. Like instant mobility (Uber, Lyft) or goods delivery (Deliveroo, Postmates).

Why is that?

The true meaning of on-demand is being able to get any service right at the moment you need it. What kind of services do people order spontaneously? In fact, there are rather few of those. Think of taxi, emergency roadside assistance, deliveries. An interesting fact: when we need instant services, we do not need very high-level qualified professionals. We just need somebody to give us a lift following GPS navigation advise.

Here’s how it works.

Why is that important? Because the more complicated a task is, the more proficiency a contractor will need to show. The longer the work session becomes. Think of babysitting, therapy, coaching. And these require a whole load of complicated logistics — which should be possible on an on-demand platform if it’s the business idea you have. The “done-just-like-that” approach gets out of the picture.

Accordingly, here’s the rule of thumb when it comes to finding a perfect on-demand startup idea:

If you want to build a profitable business in a short time, choose the business models that would not require hiring top-professionals. Transportation and delivery are at the best choices here.

If you aim to “create an Uber” for more complicated things, such as coaching or tutoring, make sure you get an app platform able to sustain all the complicated logistics of it.

Transportation business opportunities with TaxiStartup platform

Here are some ideas for on-demand transportation businesses. They are all perfectly possible with TaxiStartup platform. The cool thing about it is that they comply with the rule of thumb we discussed above. This means, finding employees will be rather simple, and a lot of people would be happy to use such services.

Bike taxi. Bicycles are amazing, right? They are ecological, they keep you fit, and they are speedier in traffic jams than a private car or public transport. Why not establishing a bike taxi? Our client Pedal Me operates such a service in London and guess what? They are so popular they don’t have time to answer Facebook messages. One more reason to launch a bike taxi is that there’s a lot of possibilities to scale your business here: think of assisting on weddings, participating in topical events, providing biking city tours…

Bike parcel delivery. People love deliveries: forgotten keys and smartphones, documents, you name it. Bike deliveries are not too complicated: to ride a bike, no license is needed. Plus, it’s a good way to get small things at the right place in an environmentally responsible way. Win-win situation, right?

Now we’re still talking about bicycles… Ever noticed how popular bike and electric scooters are nowadays? The thing is, this kind of transport is extremely handy in crowded cities with heavy traffic. Try thinking about an on-demand rental service for bikes and compact electric vehicles. This can be the only way out for the mobility industry in megacities. In fact, a startup working with rentals hardly even needs employees…

Tuk-tuk taxi. Popular in many countries, these tuk-tuks are easy to operate and are, let’s admit, incredibly authentic. Therefore they are popular among tourists everywhere around the world, from Delhi to Paris. However, if you target your business at tourists primarily, take care to shape your marketing strategy accordingly so that they will learn about you. ASO and social media ads will be of great help here.

Child-friendly taxi. Okay, people with children deserve better than begging taxi companies for a child seat. Wouldn’t it be great if it was possible to order a cab that comes with a child seat by design? Maybe with several child seats even… Really, this is a dream for many people in many locations. And accordingly, a beautiful startup idea.

Women-only taxi. Women make 51% of buyers in the world right now. Some experts even call addressing women as consumers a key to economic growth. Ever since feminism, women claim safe spaces — they do it for various reason. And this makes girls-drive-girls transportation so popular all around the world. TaxiStartup clients run successful “women-taxi” companies: one in Brazil, another one in Russia. They are doing really well.

Roadside assistance. Our client in El Salvador has noticed there’s a way to provide high-quality on-demand services in emergency roadside assistance. His idea was to connect professional, reliable contractors with those who need their services asap. So this client of ours, LifeOne Assist, has made a connection to an insurance company, and voila! A perfectly trustworthy roadside assistance on-demand service was born. The lessons here: think beyond and never hesitate to collaborate with certified organizations and professionals.

Fix-it on-demand. From a plumber to an electrician, fix-it services are popular and are often needed “right now”. Isn’t this a great idea for an on-demand startup? Just make sure you recruit the right people — after all, it’s more of a personal service than giving a lift.

Cargo delivery. As we’ve discussed before, people often need things delivered. Sometimes, these things are big and clumsy: a wedding dress, a box full of heavy tools… A serious on-demand cargo delivery requires quite a lot of logistics, but it’s still a great solution. Plus, a huge part of this logistics is being arranged by TaxiStartup.

Dog-walking services. When you’re traveling or spending extra time at the office, knowing your pet is safe and happy can be a real relief. This makes dog-walking services a cool on-demand startup idea. Consider this: no special training needed to do it. A lot of people can just pop in to walk someone’s dog and make some extra cash. This business is scalable, too: think of all the pets that need human attention while their own human is away.

Meal-kits delivery. This is probably the most specialized service in this list. The logistics around it are pretty complicated: packaging, printing instructions and recipes, delivery — and this is only what’s on the surface. Also, the local market can be already saturated with suchlike solutions. Services of this kind are generally better off when provided on subscription. If that’s what your heart’s yearning for, make sure you think the whole logistics through and through.

One more tip for you to develop a really great business idea. Make sure the idea solves the problems real people have. Here’s the truth about business: you don’t create it for yourself, you create it for the customers who need it. Do your research — this is the only way to come up with a stunning solution and conquer the market.

Some extra tips for a successful on-demand business

There are some insights we’ve gained from working with our international and diverse clients over all these years.

Just as we’ve once seen in the dot-coms era, only the strongest can survive in a saturated market. So here are the main reasons beautiful on-demand startup ideas end up bankrupting — and the ways to address them.

Low brand awareness and no loyalty

Technically, there’s often no reason for customers to prefer a taxi app X to a taxi app Y. People just look for better deals and betray businesses quite easily. Unless there’s more to a company than merely attractive fares.

What clever companies do is creating a sustainable brand identity. They nourish awareness and are constantly busy raising brand loyalty. Creating an appealing brand that stands for something meaningful is often the most straightforward way to make sure clients and employees will stay with you.

Occasional need for the services

The main idea of on-demand apps is giving people what they need at the very moment they need it. Now, if consumers only need your services once a year, how will your business develop?

This is why a “Christmas tree delivery” on-demand app is a poor idea. (Well, except for as a one-time promotion maybe.) The more often people need your services, the more predictable your revenue flow will be. Good advice: avoid getting involved with episodic and unstable customer behavior.

Relying on dubious business models

Very often, startupers do not even bother with basic customer research. Relying on your deep feeling in what the market needs can be successful when you’re at Jeff Bezos level. Ever before, there are good old market research and business model shaping.

Figuring out objective aims and measurable goals is yet another struggle. Concentrate on providing services that result in a real, objective outcome — this is a simple way to measure how well the things are going for you, the customers, and the employees. Measurable, practical outcomes will also help your further business planning.

As you see, coming up with a great on-demand startup idea is not exactly rocket science. Choosing a reliable technical solution able to sustain logistics around an on-demand is already half of the work. Creating a consistent brand and attracting loyal customers and employees brings you even closer to becoming a great business. Working with a well-grounded business model and developing measurable and objective development goals is the last step to picking a good on-demand startup idea. You’re all set now!

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Holiday marketing for taxi apps

Here’s how to manage your seasonal activities, why it is important and how to get started with it.

Holidays being the busiest period of the year is a perfect time to reach your audience with the custom-made content. People are spending an increasing amount of time on mobile browsing for gifts, researching products, or buying last minute deals. There’s no better time for your audience to engage with your brand or try your product. All in all, holidays are a perfect time to remind the users about yourself to retain the existing audience.

The template we’ll talk about today is usable for any of your marketing activities, any holidays or occasion of your choice. Ready?

1. Set your business goals

Define what you want to reach with this holiday promotion. Think business and the stage of your development.

Are people aware of your mobility app at all? Are they at the point of considering it to be the best product among others? If you already operate you want to drive more conversion like installs and therefore get more successful rides. Focus on the numbers increase you want reach.

Here are some examples of the goals you can set:

Encourage installs of your app to increase the number of rides during the peak holiday season.

Create product awareness among the largest holiday audience.

2. Define the toolkit

Wise people say: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”.
Have your measurement plan ready beforehand to track your ads progress and change what works and what doesn’t on the go.

We provide a range of tools required for tracking your holidays (and not just these) campaigns.

Facebook SDK is integrated into every TaxiStartup/now Onde powered branded solution. You can request access to it from our support team. And the rest are custom requested analytics tools that are also integrated.

Facebook Analytics

Facebook Analytics collects all data on how people are using your app in one dashboard.

App users do not have to sign in via Facebook or even to have a Facebook account at all! Facebook SDK provides you with insights on app users demographic characteristics, devices they use, the pages they like. It is a great source of ideas on partnering with other companies your target audience is already engaged with. And guess what? The holiday season is the perfect time to start!

Here’s the list of all post-install events tracked by Facebook SDK. “Post-install” means you can see how people attributed to a certain ads campaign behave after they’ve installed your app.

Keep track of the following events:

App install — user installs the app

App launch — user opens the app

Sign up for the app — user gets registered in the app

Booking confirmed — user books the services

Order cancelled — user cancels an order

Trip paid — user proceeds a payment for an order

Trip paid — user proceeds a payment for an order

Card added — user ties up a credit card to their account

Firebase by Google

Firebase Analytics tracks your app usage and also paid acquisition channels. If you want to use Universal app campaigns powered by Google for your iOS apps, Firebase is the only way to track installs for each campaign.

Advanced analytics that will include all the post-install events tracked by Facebook mentioned in the previous slide!

AppsFlyer

Spreading your budget across different acquisition channels is highly recommended — this is a fact. If you do so and want to track all the campaigns in one place, AppsFlyer is your best friend. And we have it integrated!

Also for those using Snapchat as an acquisition channel and want to track conversions, AppsFlyer is a must.

Analytics summary

These tools give you a great power to measure, target and optimize campaigns based on the real data from your app.

Tip: All the events that mean the most to your business are already integrated so you can start advertising and optimizing. Cool, huh?

3. Audience

Setting up your targeting is simply essential.

To understand your audiences, dive deeper into the demographics, location, interests and purchase patterns of your current and potential customers. The above mentioned Facebook analytics is a perfect tool for it.

Custom Audience

Advertising tools like Facebook and Snapchat allow setting up Custom Audiences based on different matching.

Custom Audience is the way to address exactly the people who already know your business. Which is extremely profitable: these people are the most likely to take the targeted actions.

Lookalike Audience

Lookalike Audiences are lists of people advertising platforms make after analysing who the existing users of your app are. The interests, behavior and demographic characteristics of a Lookalike Audience are resembling to those of your active users. Accordingly, these people are very likely to join the brand community.

4. Define user acquisition channels

Arranging a whole system of mobile user acquisition activities and splitting the budget among them is what you need for an impressive result.

We recommend using trustworthy traffic sources like

Facebook

Instagram

Universal app campaigns by Google

Snapchat

You can read about setting up campaigns with each of them in our blog.

Google Universal App campaigns (UAC) is based on machine learning algorithms. It means that they automatically advertise the app to the right users at the most relevant moments. Uber is using UACs extremely successfully in many locations.
Facebook and Instagram (you use the same Facebook ads manager) provide extremely precise targeting possibilities having demographic categories such as even “People who like soup and are likely to buy a Tesla car in the next few months”.

Snapchat is a live-video-streaming channel, especially popular among young folks looking for real, trustworthy content. The Snapchat’s specific format — short videos only available for watching for a rather short time span — engages enormous audiences all over the world. If you want to target a marketing campaign for young people and drive app installs specifically from them, Snapchat is the perfect fit.

Creative formats

The main rule is simple: look natural on the channel chosen. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Try testing out different formats and approaches: you basically never know what works best. Backing on your audience profile, use video on Snapchat, make 5-7 seconds pre-roll video ads on Youtube, try creating appealing stories. After you define audience and channels, choosing the formats needed will get easier — promise.

Design approach

Ads design

You see, people don’t go to Facebook or Snapchat to look up the services they need. So there’s totally no use in advertising as if they were waiting to bump into your message.

Get contextual. Work with the contexts people know: create something resonating with their beliefs and aspirations. Be fun. It’s Holidays after all!

Play around with your users’ context. Holiday spirit is all around — you can become a part of it and add up to inspiring certain emotions. Remember not everybody is even happy with the holidays: some people feel stresses or lonely. You can try to create content to fit this mood. And make them smile.

Storefront design

You can launch decorated creatives — but if you do so, you link your app with the topic. Make sure you have a special offer for it.

My suggestions is: create a new service type discounted for the holidays or just rename an existing one.

Design. Stand out if you dare

You need to test different approaches. Say, when everyone else is decorating their creatives with mistletoe and talks about the beauty of Christmas, you can joke around the topic, mock it and use creative that gets you to stand out in the crowd.

Brainstorm and be different. Humour and dare can be the best choice.

Campaign template

So, here a list of all decisions you need to make before starting a campaign.

Explore partnership

Seems like a lot of work? Well, no sweet without sweat.

There’s also good news: you don’t have to do it alone!

We can run campaigns for you, and here’s an early-bird offer. We can make creative custom designs for your ads on Snapchat specifically in partnership with the Snapchat team. They share the insights and what really works with their audience to make your campaigns as successful as possible.

Summary

Release 0.23.1 MIRAGE

Release 0.23 MIRAGE

Just the way this cat is emerging, TaxiStartup new system features are emerging with MIRAGE, the new release.

MIRAGE brings you more possibilities to analyze data and several new magic ingredients added to Passenger and Driver applications.

Driver app

Long story short, we’ve changed some things and now there’s no need to specify your country when adding credit cards in Driver application anymore. It’s not paramount, but handy for your employees.

Passenger app

In the Passenger app, there is no need to specify your country when adding credit cards, either.
But that’s not it. There’s also a new flow of leaving tips to drivers in the app: it’s now easier and the whole process is much clearer. Passengers can set the “Default tip” and change it over time.
Enjoy!

Killer feature: more analytics for your app promotion!

In this release, we’ve added AppsFlyer integration for Passenger app analytics. What is it and how does it work?

AppsFlyer is a service allowing to attribute where the users came from to your app. In fact, AppsFlyer solution is a really cutting-edge one. They basically create a unique “digital fingerprint” of every user tapping or clicking on your ads — and follow the user to the app stores to see what they are doing motivated by the ad. We’ve integrated the AppsFlyer analytics for your apps. Every app event is being tracked and attributed to clicking on a particular ad.

This is the ultimate — well, the only! — way to see which ads really work for your app, and how they work. It’s even more effective than Facebook SDK because Facebook only tracks the ads placed on Facebook platforms, while AppsFlyer tracks literally any ad on the web!
AppsFlyer is partners with a great many of paid user acquisition platforms — this makes tracking ads efficiency really productive.

You can enjoy AppsFlyer analytics only if you have paid acquisition campaigns powered by Taxistartup going on. This is the only way to make it work for your Passenger apps. Because AppsFlyer is a third-party resource, special fee applies for this service: $0.05 per paid app install (the fee doesn’t apply for organic installs though).

Integration with Whoosh

Good news for the companies in the South Africa. We’ve extended the payment gateways in your country. Now you can process credit and debit card payments via the Whoosh payment gateway. We know many of you have been waiting for it — so enjoy the reliability of Whoosh!

New service types

At Taxistartup, we’re proud to make everything possible: literally every on-demand service you can imagine can be realized on our platform. With Mirage release, we’re happy to announce new service types available:

Microbus — for driving more clients at a time or making on-demand mobility accessible for people who need extra room in car.

Exceptional — for our clients working with luxurious fleets.

And even more…

Now our system supports Lithuanian and Finnish languages!

Go for it!

Reports analysis and use cases

Company reports: how to use it for business analytics?

You definitely know there’s a lot of information stored in your Company panel. All the valuable business data about how clients interact with your services, how the dispatchers and drivers do their jobs, the orders and the payments done within the system.

Below, you can see the whole process of getting to the reports tab and downloading some reports to your computer to Google Disk. We advise to download the reports to Google Disk though, because it gives you an easy way to filter and analyse all this data.

After loading your reports to Google Disk, enjoy editing and filtering them in any way you need to analyse company business performance. On the sample below, you see how this can be done.

In fact, the information stored in Reports is a unique source of growth insights for your business: you can manage the clients flow, drivers and operators workloads and efficiency, use data for marketing activities and promotions, etc. Let’s see how you can use every specific report type.

Clients reports

What kind of data do you get

Here you can find a detailed list of data gathered in Clients reports of your company. Long story short, Clients reports provide you with:

Passenger email addresses and telephone numbers;

Passenger profile status (active/invited/closed);

The number of orders made, paid and cancelled (reasons specified).

How to use it

Being a massive database of passengers information, Clients reports contain everything you need to make the communication with clients more efficient.

The most obvious thing is targeting your marketing activities. Having passenger contact details is necessary for launching referral and engagement campaigns. For instance, one can pick out the passengers who’ve completed a certain number of trips to provide them with a special discount or promotional action — via email or SMS.

Clients reports are also a perfect source of information if you want to compare clients activity over several reporting periods. This can give you more insights into the busiest periods of company work, a potential number of drivers needed, and revenue flows.
Analysing the numbers of cancelled orders and cancellation reasons can help you adjust cancellation fees on one hand, and tackle problems with the clients who abuse the system in any way on the other hand.

How to use it

Drivers reports are there for you to keep an eye on the drivers’ productivity and strategize fleet management.

First of all, it’s a perfect source of information for solving any complaints or concerns. You can always compare what a customer says with what the system actually registers. With Drivers reports, you’ve always got a clear picture of every driver’s performance.

The data on the number of offers accepted, rejected, ignored, cancelled, and the transaction fees totals can be used to make decisions on the further fleet policy. For instance, you can suspend drivers who reject or ignore orders, give bonuses to the hardworking drivers (via giving manual balance top-ups or providing subscription privileges).

Orders reports

What kind of data do you get

Unique identification number of every order (Order ID);

Date and time of order creation, order source (Passenger App, Dispatch Panel, Web Panel) and the order source ID;

Actual pick up location, arrival time, arrival location, drop off location, drop off time, the time and the location where the driver has finished the order.

(The full list of data types plus detailed description can be found here.)

How to use it

Yeah, it’s a lot. To avoid pain, let’s see how to use this, exactly.

The number of cancelled orders can help you to regulate cancellation fees.

The cancellation reasons are there to make troubleshooting easier.

Every detail of each particular order can be checked up, which makes it much easier to solve any problems between customers and employees.

Knowing all the pickup points per period of time you can see what locations are the most popular and send more drivers there in order to work more efficiently.

Plus, knowing the popular origin and destination locations can be a source of ideas on business partnerships.

You can see what service types are the most popular and manage your fleet and driver subscriptions accordingly.

Driver and passenger ratings can be a source of valuable information about how the services actually work out for customers and employees.

Operators reports

What kind of data do you get

Dispatcher ID, name, email, phone, profile state;

The total number of orders;

The total number of cancelled orders (cancellation reasons specified);

The number of finished paid and unpaid orders.

How to use it

Okay, this type of reports is only useful for companies that work with a dispatch panel. But hold your horses scrolling to the next paragraph: it’s also a source of precious information for those who work with Partner access — and you know how profitable this feature is, right?

Of course, the main reason to download Operators reports is seeing how exactly productive the dispatchers are. You can also check up the reasons in case their productivity is not really stunning: maybe they simply cannot perform better because there are not enough vehicles?

The same works for Partner access operators: you can see which partnerships turn out the best, and adjust your partnership offers and policy accordingly.

Payment reports

What kind of data do you get

Payment ID, date;

Payer type (= payment source: Passenger App or Third-party payment);

Payer ID, name, phone number, email;

Payment method, status, the exact amount paid, currency;

The last 4 digits of the card used for payment;

Reference ID (= Order ID);

How to use it

The first and the most obvious charming thing about Payment reports is that you can see how do people prefer to pay — and shape your pricing policy accordingly.

Another thing is that in case you accept credit cards, Payment reports are a goldmine of data needed if any problems occur with banks or payment gateways. You see, each payment is attributed to an order (that’s why a Reference ID is an Order ID). Any payment process can be tracked using this Reference ID. This is extremely useful in cases when something goes wrong with a payment and nobody has a clue why. Isn’t that great?

Summary

As you can see, Company reports is a perfect solution for gathering all kinds of precious data on your business performance. You can use the reports to get a plenty of valuable insights needed for planning and managing business goals.

There are 5 types of reports you can request for any period of current interest:

Clients reports. Clients reports contain everything you need to make the communication with clients more efficient: contact details and activity statistics. As a result, Clients reports are perfect for analysing the app performance and planning marketing moves.

Drivers reports. These reports are indispensable for keeping an eye on the drivers’ efficiency and strategizing your fleet management.

Orders reports. These reports are a goldmine of information on customer experience: with it, solving any problems between customers and employees is much easier. You can also see the most popular locations in Orders reports, and adjust your fleet accordingly. However, there’s much more to this type of reports — in fact, it’s our favourite one!

Operators reports. Especially useful for companies who work with dispatch panels and Partner access, this type of reports allow to get a clear idea of the dispatchers’/partner operators’ productivity.

Payment reports. This reports type is there for you to see which ways people prefer to pay — and shape your pricing policy accordingly. It also provides a possibility to address any payment-related problems occurring.

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How to launch Facebook Ads

Advertise on Facebook and get more engaged users than anywhere else: ultimate guide

Facebook attracts more than 2 billion users per month. It is huge and still growing, it owns Instagram, people all over the world use it 8 times per day on the average… There’s more: Facebook stores a lot of information its users willingly share with the platform. And there’s even more than that: Facebook gives businesses a unique advertising tool, an extremely fine one.

Yes, it’s Facebook Ads. In fact, every entrepreneur has heard of it, and many are willing to invest in it since Facebook Ads are associated high ROI. Surprisingly enough, a lot of Facebook Ads investments go in vain — because using this tool can be tricky.

In this guide, you will learn to set and adjust Facebook Ad campaigns to maximize their effectiveness.

Set up your first Facebook campaign

The very moment you submit your mobile apps to App Store and Google Play, we at Onde link them to Facebook analytics via “Facebook for developers”. This setting makes sure you can access Ads Manager and launch Facebook Ad campaigns for your app.
In fact, this is also the groundwork for analyzing the efficiency of your Facebook ad campaigns. Thanks to it, you can track link clicks, app installs and a plenty of other significant app events.

Facebook ad campaigns: basics

First, let’s see how Facebook Ads function in general.
Thanks to all the data people voluntarily share with the platform, Facebook is able to aggregate and analyze huge amounts of information about what people like/purchase and, consequently, are likely to like/purchase.

This is the wonder of Facebook precise targeting: basically, the platform provides marketers with extremely fine-defined social categories, including even “People who like soup and are likely to buy a Tesla car in the next few months”.
This is a goldmine of audiences to show your app to, segmented and all.
Another great thing about Facebook Ads: they do not interrupt the normal flow of user interaction with the platform. People can check it out, just keep scrolling, and even get back to it later again.
While setting an ad, you can choose among the placement options:

This is how Facebook Ads look in the three most common formats.

Audience network ads are placed inside the apps or on websites Facebook owns. Instagram ads are fitted naturally into the Instagram feed.

Ads Manager is the dashboard you get right at the moment of creating a business account on Facebook.

Let’s explore it.

Set smart campaign goal & target

A campaign is a very general advertising tool. Making a new campaign means, first of all, setting a goal for it. You see, people do not visit Facebook to look up services they need. So don’t advertise as if they were waiting to bump into your message.

Advertise the way it feels natural: set the appropriate goals depending on the stage of business development.

Before the app launch, choose for

Creating brand awareness;

Reaching more potential customers;

During and just after app launch, motivate people to use your service with

Attracting more traffic to your app or website;

Raising engagement;

Driving more app installs;

Collecting information about (potential) customers.

Further on just stick to maximizing the effectiveness by launching campaign to

Get more conversions (meaningful app events, such as booking a ride).

This is called advertising funnel: a series of promotions with the goals that elaborate each other. The first one will get people knowing your brand, the second one will make them ready to use the service, and the third will make them be your loyal customers. How cool is that?

Set up the ad basic information, such as currency, time zone, and your location.

Now it’s time to target! There is plenty of options to choose from:

Location;

Age;

Gender;

Languages spoken;

Interests;

Behaviours.

Depending on your data input, Facebook will show you the estimated campaign results. You can save created target audiences to address these exact people with other campaigns.

Plan a Facebook ad campaign budget

The most complicated part is now done: you’ve set the goals and told Facebook Ads Manager everything known about the target audience. It’s time to figure out a reasonable budget for this campaign.

The cool thing about Facebook Ads is that it’s a very cost-effective tool. The cost-per-action is normally rather low, and there’s automated budget optimizing. For an absolute beginner, the best way to start evolving with Facebook Ads financially is to trust the automated budget optimization and see where it leads you.

However, the cost-effectiveness of any given Facebook ad campaign will depend on three main factors:

The goal set. A campaign to raise brand awareness will naturally have lower cost-per-action than a campaign to draw conversions.

The information you provide about your target audience. While Facebook allows targeting exactly the people who’re likely to become your users, you still need to know who these people are. The better you communicate it to the Ads Manager, the bigger your chance to succeed at a lower price.

The quality of the creatives you will submit. The visuals and the text have an equal weight when it comes to driving consumer behaviour. Take care your creative Facebook Ads assets are flawless, and never hesitate to test several options to see what works better.

Within a couple of days already, you will be able to see how good an ad campaign is and if the budget is spent efficiently.

While monitoring the spendings and the campaign progress at the stage of increasing conversions, pay attention to Cost-per-action rather than to Cost-per-click. The difference is that Cost-per-Action shows the price you pay for every new active client, while Cost-per-click only demonstrates what an “aware”, potential client costs in course of the campaign.
After setting the budget, adjust the delivery Schedule — how much you will spend on this campaign and how long the campaign will last.

Now the ad is set and it’s time to move to the next level: creating an ad itself.

Design an appealing Facebook Ad

Here’s where it gets really hot. It’s time to make some stunning creatives: format, copy, visuals, call-to-action.

For each ad set, you can create multiple creatives and test them to find out what works best for the audience.
Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for creating a perfect, effective Facebook ad. The specifics will always depend on your brand personality, the customer’s profile, the competitors positioning and more. Yet there are several rules that can help you out.

A good Facebook ad should be:

Relevant to the viewer. This, again, is about knowing the audience and their needs. Your creatives should display exactly what clients want, and exactly the way they want it.

Clearly valuable. People often take emotional decisions, so stating an emotional value of your proposition is a good thing. You can present a clear rational value too; combine two types of ads or A/B-test them — but always give people a good reason to pay attention to your ad in their feed.

Visual. Whether using video or images, make sure they are telling right enough to get people interested. Facebook ads creatives should also match the visual identity of the brand.

Inspiring to act. There are several options to choose for a “call-to-action” button — stick to the one fitting the campaign goal most. You can also add call-to-action slogans to the copy: headline, description, or both. A good call to action should motivate people to take action immediately, and tell clearly what action they should take.

Test and compare ads

Normally, within a few days after the campaign launch you will already harvest the first results and see what works well and what needs change.

You already know about the glorious opportunity to run multiple campaigns, and various creative sets within one campaign, too. Facebook will highlight the most effective ones. You can also look up specific key performance indicators in the Ads Manager dashboard.

The dashboard is customizable: you can hide and add the metrics that matter most at every point of your business development.
For the sake of your budget, deactivate the campaigns that don’t work as soon as you know their delivery is poor.

Expand further: Custom Audience, Lookalike Audience

After learning the basics about Facebook Ads, you can move on to creating Audiences to advertise to.
In the Facebook Ads Manager, go to the Audiences tab.

In this tab, you actually find a pretty detailed instructions on setting Custom, Lookalike or Saved Audiences.

Saved Audiences are there to reuse targeting options that are still actual for the company, over and over again. In the Saved Audiences tab, you can set the characteristics of the people you need to learn about your app and come back to this group every time needed.

But now, let’s get to the more exciting options.

Creating a Custom Audience is the ultimate way to address exactly the people who already know your business. Which is good, because they are the most likely to take the targeted actions.

There’s a drastic difference between showing your ads on Facebook to an “unaware” audience and to a Custom Audience. The prices are much lower if you show it to the Custom Audience, and you get a way more clicks with it.

People who can be included in a Custom Audience are the people who are already aware of your business because they have interacted with it via Facebook, your booking apps or any other platform.

As you see, there are different ways to create it, each one of them suits certain business goals. You can create Custom Audiences from the people who perform certain actions within the apps (say, have downloaded it but have not yet ordered a ride).

Creating a Custom Audience based on your website data is a good thing, too — since a website is a must-have anyway. Mind this: to create a Custom Audience based on your website traffic, you’ll need to plug in a Facebook pixel — a tool that tells Facebook about the actions people take on the website. Stay cool, it’s easy to create, just follow the native guidelines.

The next step is creating a Lookalike Audience. Lookalikes are basically lists of people Facebook generates knowing who the company’s existing clients are. Those people are very likely to become the new loyal customers of the app.

The main reason to create Lookalike Audiences is that it gives you an opportunity to show the ad to bigger groups of people without showing the same ad to the same people a hundred times a day. Plus, Lookalikes allow targeting people who are really potentially interested in your services — and this is always a better choice than just “spraying and praying”.

Yet another cool thing about Custom and Lookalikes is that setting these audiences helps you to discover more about your clients. To do so, run some tests with different Custom and Lookalike Audiences check up Facebook Audience Insights to discover the main demographic characteristics of the customers. In fact, being able to target even better is a bonus from being able to target with Facebook precision.

Summary for a lazy reader

There is absolutely no reason to leave Facebook Ads aside while promoting your app. Facebook allows flawless targeting people who need to know about your services at every stage, from app launch to expanding to new cities or countries.

Facebook Ads Manager dashboard is rather automated and provides enough detailed instructions on Ads creating. It also provides analytical tools for keeping track of the effectiveness of every Ad campaign created.

To maximize the positive effect of Facebook Ads on your marketing strategy, try setting Custom and Lookalike Audiences. These two tools give you an opportunity to advertise directly to the users potentially interested in your app without annoying them with a too-frequent showing the ad. Advertise and prosper.

Really clear step-by-step guide to submitting your app to app stores.

How to submit your app to the stores: clear 11-steps guide

Beginning a business with a white label app solution, app owners often do not think of app submission to the stores as of a separate piece of work to plan. Not really clever: submitting your app to the stores with search-optimized primary listings can make your app visibility great already at the point of the launch.
In fact, at OnDe we do the biggest piece of work on app publish for our clients. If you are our client – you don’t have to worry about creating dev accounts for Google Play and App Store. Just sign-up and enjoy.
If you are not our client – you will only have to take care of creating developer accounts on App Store and Google Play and the contents for app’s primary listings. In this article you’ll learn how to do this.

Step 1. Create developer accounts

First, let’s create developer accounts, for both App Store and Google Play. You’ll need them to store and distribute your app. Here’s the guide to creating a developer account on Google Play.
It’s strongly recommended to create a separate developer account — we will need a full access to it and don’t want to make you uncomfortable sharing a password to your personal mailbox.
We need logins and passwords for the both accounts in order to submit your app and keep it always updated. Please, send it to us before proceeding to the next steps. Also, please, do not ever change your logins and passwords for these accounts — otherwise we won’t be able to access it anymore, and that’s not productive at all.

The first clever thing to do before filling in the listings is to study App Store listing guidelines and Google Play guidelines really well. Both stores make pretty clear what’s okay while submitting your app and what’s not. Both stores also provide information on how to optimize app data to their search engines.
Filling in the listings should be based on an app store optimization strategy. Metadata (such as app name, keywords set, etc.) influence apps visibility and, subsequently, it’s conversion rate. Optimizing it already before submitting apps to the stores is strongly recommended.

Step 3. Add app logo and icon

You’ve got the “White label checklist” from your account manager. Now it’s time to fill it in!
Take care: all the fields in the document are mandatory to fill in.
We start with your company logo and the app icon. Because you’re submitting a white label app, those are crucial: it’s the logo and the unique, recognizable app icons that help clients to recognize your brand among others. Note: Passenger app and Driver app icons should be different.
Here are some rules for the images:

Submit logo in vector format (Adobe Illustrator or any other professional vector graphics editor).

All logo fonts have to be converted to curves.

A logo needs to convert nice and easily into an icon.

A logo needs to convert into monochrome easily.

A logo should have a usage guide attached.

App icons have to be in vector format as well (.ai, .eps, .pdf, .svg). The following options will do, too:

.png format with transparency, minimal height 1024px;

Layered .psd, minimal height 1024px.

In case you add splash screens, take care they meet the following format criteria:

Minimal size 3840×3840;

Vector format (.ai, .eps, .pdf, .svg)

Or raster format (layered .psd).

Images quality is a must, helping your apps to look good.
Don’t have a logo and app icons yet? You can submit it later, just mark “Don’t have it yet” in the checklist.

Step 4. Add screenshots

Now, let’s get to the screenshots. Those are extremely important: they give potential customers all the information about app’s functionality. Both Driver and Passenger apps need at least 5 screenshots each (you can add more than 5 though, the more the better ).
We include default screenshots in the standard branded app plan. However, if you choose for a plan including App Store optimization, you get a whole bunch of really great screenshots with it.
It’s important that the screenshots are explanatory enough. Don’t forget to choose default or mention your own screenshot headers. Headers should describe the particular feature of the app shown on a screenshot.
There are also additional mandatory tabs to fill in while submitting screenshots. Do not leave it blank — they make your screenshots personalized and help to attract users!

Step 5. Set the language

In the first column of the checklist you have, choose the default language of your apps. The second and the third columns are there for you to select additional languages if you need app descriptions in them as well.
Note: Providing description translations in the languages chosen is your own task, we cannot translate or localize app metadata for you.
Google Play supports more languages than App Store — this is why sometimes you won’t be able to find your language in the App Store list. If this language is not supported by Apple but is supported by Google, just type its name in the “Language” field and provide a translation. Description of your Android apps will this way be available in the language you need.

Step 6. Add the app name

The first thing to do before declaring your app’s name is to check out if the name you have in your mind is unoccupied. You can search the web for it yourself, or we can do it for you to make sure the app’s name is unique.
Next, see if a website domain with such name is available, and if it’s possible to create a page with this name on Facebook, Twitter and any other social media platforms where the company should be present.
Some app owners prefer add key phrases to the app name on the stores. The only problem is, Apple doesn’t really approve of this practice. Check out our app optimization guides for App Store and Google Play to do this right.

Step 7. Set the relevant keywords and descriptions

People use keywords in app stores to find an app fitting their needs the most. Optimizing keywords set and saturating app metadata with the relevant key phrases helps people to find your app.
Use special tools (keywordtool.io, appkeywords.net, appkeywords.io) to find the most relevant keywords for your app. At the beginning stage, avoid using “too popular” words: until the app gets a high conversion rate, competing for popular words will only keep it down in the ranking. Start with unique keywords with a not-too-high volume.
While setting the chosen keywords, follow the rule “one keyword=one word” (e.g. “taxi,Bogota” instead of “Taxi in Bogota”). Separate keywords with commas, leave out the spaces (e.g. taxi,Bogota).
Take care: the visibility weight of different types of metadata differs, so make sure the most “weighty” metadata parts are keywords-saturated — especially for Google Play.

Step 8. Provide website links

There are several links required by the app stores while submitting an app:

Website page URL;

Privacy policy page URL;

Support page URL;

Marketing page URL.

The first two are absolutely mandatory. Submit active links only: each URL will be automatically verified by the stores. Your Privacy policy has to be up to date: for instance, companies working with European citizens should have a GDPR-compliant Privacy policy.
In case you don’t have Support and Marketing URLs yet, fill in your website URL again in these fields. You can catch up and provide this information later.

Step 9. Fill in additional listings

Additional listings section is optional to fill in. In this part of the checklist, you can leave the company’s email and a phone number. This information will become available on the app page on the stores as soon as the apps will be approved.
In the “Distribute in these countries” field, you can list countries where the apps should be available. We advise to leave this field untouched: who knows to which countries your business will expand in the next 10 years.

Step 10. Fill in contact information

In the contact information chapter you can leave the company details in the passenger app and driver app so that clients and employees could reach out. An email, a phone number and social media account links you set here will be shown in the “Get in touch” tab of the app. Links to “Terms” and “Copyright” will be available in the “Legal” tab.

Step 11. All set! Go rock the market!

Once you fill everything in, check it once again. Do all the fields content the required information? Won’t you regret the app name? Is the metadata optimized enough for the launch? Yes? Then send it to us!
We’ll upload your app to your developer accounts on App Store and Google Play, and keep them updated all the time. You see? No sweat, and yet your apps come to stun the market.

Get more ratings & reviews to make your app popular

App store ratings and reviews are an important factor when it comes to your app visibility and conversions. Of course, they provide users’ feedback and demonstrate how exactly loved the app is. At the same time, many app owners do not realize app reviews and ratings management is really vital.

In this guide, you will see how reviews and ratings can influence the well-being of the app and learn to manage them in order for the app to convert better.

Why app ratings and reviews so important?

The key idea we’d love to share today is that the number of app ratings and reviews actually have a great impact on the visibility and the conversion rate of the app. While keywords and visuals optimization is done to get your app visible in the app stores, app ratings and reviews allow visitors to make a decision: is this app good enough to download and use?

79% of all users check up the app ratings and reviews before downloading an app. This huge percentage is true for both Apple App Store and Google Play.
In the both stores, the ratings & reviews data is visible for users already in the search results. This is exactly what makes them an extremely valuable app store ranking factor, crucial for the conversion rate.

Apple lets visitors to rate by stars (5 to 1) and leave more elaborate text comments on their experience with an app. App preview page visitor only gets to see the most popular review, for the rest people need to swipe right.

Google Play has the color bars where green is 5-stars rating and red is 1-star rating. Google shows several most popular reviews on the preview page, and generates comprehensive data for “Review Highlights” so that potential user could understand what are the main things people found good or bad about the app.

Basically, the impact of app store reviews and ratings is so big that an app a 3-star rating converts 50% less than an app rated with 5 stars.
This means if your app has an average rating below 4 stars, all app store optimization efforts for whether organic or paid user acquisition are very much doomed to fail.

How to ask users to rate an app?

All things considered, for your ASO strategy to succeed, you need as many (positive) app store reviews and ratings as possible. The right moment to start collecting it is even before you really launch the app.
Yeah. Sounds more tricky than it is. To gather some basic feedback on the app needed, ask your team, friends and family, and of course the first customers to rate it and leave a review. This will provide the app with some good start.

After the first favorable reviews are in, it becomes a question of collecting more of them and tackling the less-favorable ones.

Motivate users to give feedback

One popular way of motivating users rating an app is giving some reward for a 5-star rating or a good review. Despite strictly speaking it’s a gray practice (neither App Store nor Google Play encourages this), it helps to increase the number of ratings by about 40%.

Both App Store and Google Play have very specific rules about contests of any kinds, so check them out thoroughly before doing this. However, you can integrate a “good rating=reward” into social media marketing campaign or offline promotional materials of any kind. The simplest way is to address the clients via the emails they’ve submitted to the company while getting registered for the app — you can get these emails via Reports in the Company panel.

Another good way to ask for extra positive feedback is the social media and the website of the company. People who follow your brand on social media or use the website form the brand community. They are anyway more ready to provide feedback than the accidental visitors of the app preview page.

Provide your social media community with a handy way to quickly rate the app — the number of ratings will boost. You can create a Shared discount code to reward the users who are willing to rate your app — this can be done in Referral programs tab in the Company panel. Encourage people to share their experience with friends — and the effects will be even more impressive.

Manage the feedback

After you launch an app-review & rating collecting campaign, brace yourself. The amount of feedback will grow, both negative and positive. There are a couple of tips for managing the ratings in a meaningful way.

Provide direct customer support

Even before you start gathering the feedback, make sure the customer support can cover the everyday challenges in user experience. Make contacting the support line as easy as possible so that all the complications of a temporary kind could be talked over immediately and would not get to the app store reviews and ratings.

Not only will this help you to avoid negative feedback left on the spur of the moment. It will also contribute to creating a good relationship with the customer community — for communities, just like gardens, love to be taken care of.

Follow app ratings and reviews constantly

Let’s begin with the basics. Asking for feedback and not monitoring the results doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
Feedback is a source of knowledge. It allows to understand if the business is developing the right way if the services meet customers expectations, and it also gives you tips (completely for free!) about what to do next to make the user experience better.

Reply app store reviews

A paramount thing to understand is this: app reviews are very much like support emails or calls. People who’re happy with your services are sharing they’re happy, and those upset want their problems addressed. The question is: why ignore app ratings and reviews while you’d never ignore a call or email from a customer?

On Google Play and on App Store, owners and developers are able to answer the reviews. This is a good possibility to turn your lemons into lemonade. Look at the picture below.
People love to feel their opinion matters, even when they leave an angry and mean message. So here’s the right way to reply negative reviews: don’t to take it personally, treat it as an improvement suggestion.

Okay, not really. But answering negative reviews calmly and friendly creates a good brand image. New app viewers will see the company being concerned about the quality of user experience, the readiness to help and the respect you have for the customers. Plus, in case the problem is addressed by the brand, you can always ask the angry customer to delete or change the review.

Answering positive comments is also good for the brand — it’s a way to show you really care and appreciate compliments.

App Store allows discarding all the reviews with every new app release. It is basically an emergency button: together with the negative comments, you will lose all the positive ones. Google Play doesn’t have such function anyway.

Wrapping up…

When managing your app reviews and ratings, keep these statistics in mind:
See how conversions change if the reviews become better? This happens because app store ratings and reviews are one of the key app store ranking factors. Gathering as much positive feedback as possible is an important part of ASO strategy.

Do not forget to handle app ratings and reviews well: answer reviews to give users the feeling of being heard, and provide a customer support channel to solve tiny everyday complications.